How long has True Love Waits been lying around?
I'm so glad you asked.
"True Love Waits" is a song by alternative rock band Radiohead. The song was first played in 1995, while the band were touring for their second studio album The Bends. The song was first released as part of the live album I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings in the form of a simple acoustic ballad, played solo by lead singer Thom Yorke in 2001. The song's brief lyrics are about a narrator's longing for true love, and the "simple desire not to be alone". The song was well received by both critics and fans, and has gone on to become a fan favourite. The song has also been played at live concerts as an introduction to "Everything in Its Right Place", accompanied by synthesizers instead of acoustic guitar and with vocal effects applied to Yorke's vocals.
Despite its popularity among fans, a studio version of "True Love Waits" was not released until 2016, when it appeared as the final track on Radiohead's ninth album, A Moon Shaped Pool.
Radiohead began performing "True Love Waits" live in 1995, during the Bends era. Over the years, it became one of their most requested live songs. Radiohead attempted recording the song during the sessions for Kid A (2000) and Amnesiac (2001), but were not satisfied with the results. The version released on the I Might Be Wrong live EP was recorded in a performance in Los Angeles on 20 August 2001.
Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich said of the song in 2012: "We tried to record it countless times, but it never worked ... To [songwriter Thom Yorke's] credit, he needs to feel a song has validation, that it has a reason to exist as a recording. We could do 'True Love Waits' and make it sound like John Mayer. Nobody wants to do that."
A "straightforward" acoustic song, "True Love Waits" was played solo by frontman Thom Yorke for I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings. Pitchfork Media described the song as having "signature unexpected chord changes and a melody that both aches and soothes". It is the last song on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, which, according to Marianne Letts in her book Radiohead and the Resistant Concept Album, is an "encore" of the EP. The sound quality of the track is good, although the noise of the crowd can occasionally be heard through the song. The lyrics of the song describe a protagonist, declaring he will "drown his beliefs" and "dress like your niece" for an unnamed lover. Yorke explained the latter statement: "the difference between young and old [is] when people start to dress sensible and act their age. This person is offering not to do that to keep the other." In the chorus, he begs the lover "just don't leave". The second verse describes the lover's "tiny hands" and "crazy kitten smile" although he also says that he is "not living, just killing time." Around three minutes into the song, Yorke sings the line "true love waits in haunted attics and true love lives on lollipops and crisps". Yorke said that the phrase "lollipops and crisps" was inspired by a story he knew about a child who was locked in his house for a week and survived by eating junk food. According to Letts, the image of an "abandoned and forgotten child slowly dying" could be likened to "Radiohead's status within the record industry."
"True Love Waits" received acclaim from critics; some of which named it the highlight of the EP. Matt LeMay of Pitchfork Media wrote that the song is "absolutely gorgeous" and "makes a very welcome ending to I Might Be Wrong." Along with "Like Spinning Plates", Pitchfork stated "True Love Waits" "justified the existence" of the EP. The NME complimented Yorke's vocals on the song, calling it "a sound so clear and true that it's obvious why he's been making doe-eyes in interviews towards the electric guitar again." Nicholas Taylor of PopMatters highly praised the song, saying that "True Love Waits" "is a bittersweet victory of love, plain and simple." He also wrote that the song "shows that behind all of Radiohead’s modernist nightmares is a fragile, desperate desire to connect, fully and meaningfully, with just one person." The song was also well received by fans, as it went on to become a fan favourite.
Reviewing A Moon Shaped Pool, Rolling Stone wrote that "True Love Waits" was "worth the wait ... the effect is like stumbling upon an old love letter years after a relationship has grown cold. Where there was once a hint of redemption in its devastating refrain, 'Just don't leave' now sounds like the longest (and saddest) goodbye."
